This invention relates generally to a method for automatically providing a compressed rendition of a video program in a format suitable for electronic searching and retrieval, and more particularly to a method for providing a compressed rendition of a video program in a format suitable for electronic searching and retrieval on the World Wide Web.
The rapid growth of the World Wide Web began with the development of an on-line browser having a graphical user interface. Graphical interfaces provide a number of important advantages, including the ability to rapidly scroll through a document to get to a particular point of interest. Moreover, the ability to interact with a medium other than text (i.e. images or audio) increases the rate at which information can be conveyed since an image often conveys an idea faster and more efficiently than text.
While graphical browsers provide an adequate interface for text and images, they provide an inadequate interface for video programs. The sequential nature of the video and audio components of a video program impedes rapid access to such programs on the World Wide Web by graphical browsers. Furthermore, because of the limited bandwidth of networks supporting the World Wide Web, and particularly the limitations of most users"" connections to such networks, it takes a long time to transmit a program with its full content. For example, at a connection speed of 28,800 bits per second, it could take up to about 45 minutes to transmit even a three or four minute audiovisual segment with sound and full-motion video. As a result, video program providers sometimes form a compressed version of the video program by manually extracting and retaining selected frames from the program while other frames are discarded. The selected frames and accompanying text, typically taken from a transcript of the program, result in a document that may subsequently be made available over the World Wide Web. However, the generation of this document is typically a tedious and time consuming task since it must be created by a manual process.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide a rendition of a video program which can be automatically generated and which allows easy interaction with graphical browsers with a minimum of information loss.
The present inventors have realized that a pictorial transcript representation of a video program is particularly well suited for on-line searching and retrieving applications such as browsing on the World Wide Web. Pictorial transcripts are compact representations of video programs which are automatically generated by selecting representative frames or images from the video program and combining them with a second media component such as audio or text which is associated with each representative frame. Properly chosen, the representative frames convey a substantial portion of the information content of the original video program. Moreover, pictorial transcripts may be generated in an automatic fashion, thus eliminating the substantial time and effort that was previously required to place a document of this type on the World Wide Web.
The inventive method provides a compressed rendition of a video program in a format suitable for electronic searching and retrieval. An electronic pictorial transcript representation of the video program is initially received. The video program has a video component and a second information-bearing media component associated therewith. The pictorial transcript representation includes a representative frame from each segment of the video component of the video program and a portion of the second media component associated with the segment. The electronic pictorial transcript is transformed into a hypertext format to form a hypertext pictorial transcript. The hypertext pictorial transcript is subsequently recorded in an electronic medium.